INTERVIEW
P82
AMA SUPERCROSS/NATIONAL MOTOCROSS CHAMPION RYAN VILLOPOTO
Settings have to be changed,
and you end up chasing your tail,
and ultimately you can't win like
that."
>>Joker Lane
The Monster Energy Cup started
out really well for Ryan Villopoto.
At the inaugural event in 2011,
he did what most assumed was
nearly impossible: He won every
race, and the full million bucks
that came with it. In 2012 and
2013, though, RV has come out
swinging to win the first race of
the night, but crashed out of race
two both times. In 2012, the culprit was the brand-new Showa Air
forks he was running, as he had
never used them in race conditions, and he simply lost the front
end.
This year, though, he won
the first race after Ryan Dungey
missed the Joker Lane, then went
toe-to-toe with James Stewart in
the second race, matching Stewart move-for-move, including a
quadruple jump that Stewart was
hitting after the start straight that
no one had done all day.
"On that kind of jump there,
you can pretty much still be all
right if you go a little short, most
of the time, because it ended with
a table," Villopoto says. "And, obviously, if he did it, I knew that
more than likely my bike and I
could do it. Obviously, I made a
